


one need not be a chamber to be haunted

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Male Solo, Masturbation, Missing Scene, hannibal is a creeper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:46:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5858518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During Bedelia's absence, Hannibal claims her territory for his own. Set during season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one need not be a chamber to be haunted

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr prompt "an abandoned or empty place." Title stolen from Emily Dickinson.  
> Bedelia is not physically present in the story, but she's very much there in spirit.

His first feeling as he enters the still quiet of Bedelia’s house is bewilderment. His second is relief. He will not have to kill her, at least not today.

He prowls the empty hallways of her home, his plastic suit squeaking on the hardwood floors. His cursory inspection merely confirms what he sensed the moment he walked in: Bedelia is gone. Her house, as much a reflection of her as his is of him, remains—a corpse missing its life-pumping heart.

It occurs to him that much can be learned from a corpse.

*

He returns on a near-weekly basis, claiming Bedelia’s territory as his own, the spoils of war. He stocks away a cache of passports and currency in the closet of her guestroom and leaves choice cuts in her freezer where the FBI will never think to look for them.

He waters her plants. He’s very concerned about the orchid which has seemed to wilt in its mistress’ absence. He tends to the fragile flower though Bedelia is no longer present to tend to him.

*

He winds his way through her home, rooms unfolding before him like a nautilus shell. He’d always been curious about her and now he is free to indulge his curiosity. It’s not rudeness—if she had not wanted him to do so, she ought not to have abandoned this place, should not have abandoned _him_. He is familiar with the front of the house—the room where they had their therapy, the foyer, the dining room, the small washroom off the kitchen—they hold little interest for him. Her home is larger that it appears from the street and he is surprised to find an indoor pool on the lowest level. He sits in a deck chair, watching as the setting sun streaks orange through the windows, and allows himself to imagine Bedelia here swimming lap after disciplined lap. It’s a pity she drained it; he would have liked to have gone for a swim.

The guest rooms are elegantly furnished but dull, with all the warmth of a luxury hotel room. They could be his own, save for Bedelia’s tendency to favor cool neutrals over his more robust and savory tones. He wonders when the last time was she had a guest to stay.

He admires the sparse chrome and glass lines of her home office, the desk of polished rosewood that matches her home as if it was tailor made to fit. Books and journals fill every available shelf and her degrees hang neatly mounted and framed on the wall. Her computer is gone as are her notes on him. He browses her files on her other patients, delighting in Bedelia’s wry observations detailed in a looping feminine cursive.

Her bedroom he saves for last.

He has pictured this holiest of holies many times. Perhaps it is the winter chill or Bedelia’s absence, but the room seems cold and distant, the underwater chamber of a frozen lake. And he knows she is gone, but he feels her icewater gaze upon on him, single brow lifted in an imperious arch at this invasion of her privacy. Even standing in this most personal of places, she still eludes him—why can he not _see_ her?

He shall simply have to look deeper.

He throws open the door to her walk-in closet, ostensibly to check which clothes are missing, as they might leave a clue to her whereabouts. There are a number of empty hangers and mentally he notes that a few of his favorite outfits do not number among those items left behind—a cerise blouse he had always admired on her, a dark jersey dress that had clung to her like a glove. He smiles to think that her favorites may be his favorites, too. He is surprised to find a dark pair of designer blue jeans, imagines them to be the relic of some long ago camping trip. As if to confirm his suspicions, his toe nudges a pair of hiking boots, size 6 ½ barely scuffed. A faded sweatshirt from alma mater hangs in the back—he cannot imagine her wearing something so casual, and expects she keeps it for sentimental value.

He takes a quick peek inside her lavender-scented drawers, disappointed to find plain but well-made underwear in nude, white, and black. She has pajamas in silver and navy silk, sensual and feminine and plain and masculine all at once. Bedelia, it would seem, does not favor the type of lingerie that would excite a man’s imagination, save for one peacock blue negligee folded and forgotten. He folds his hand over the cups of one of her bras, stroking the smooth material, and for a moment he can feel warm breast beneath his hand instead of empty air.

His inspection is inconclusive.

*

He returns again next week to the bedroom, neatly opening and uncovering storage boxes and with archaeological exactitude until he at last unearths the fossil he seeks: a smallish sized box, barely large enough to hold a photograph album in cracked maroon leather. Bedelia has held on to this archive of her life, the physical memory palace that seemingly everyone keeps. He looks at the photographs which range from adolescence through college. The notes are all there, but he cannot string them together to form a melody—he hasn’t Will’s gift.

A girl astride a horse, long blonde hair tightly braided, a prize ribbon pinned to the horse’s bridle. A group of girls in blue plaid kilts and penny loafers in the first bloom of youth, Bedelia’s eyes clever and watchful, a secret smile around her rosebud mouth. Bedelia in the virginal crinoline of a debutante standing stiffly beside a male escort, the light in her eyes gone cold. A young woman with long blonde hair staring off into the distance, softly out of focus.

He wonders (he has often wondered) if something happened to Bedelia. Perhaps, like him, she simply happened.

*

He has taken to voicing his thoughts aloud to an empty chair occupied by a single bottle of bespoke perfume. It’s absurd, and more than a little sad, that she has reduced him to this. Again, he curses his dependence on her.

“The dance with Will Graham has quickened from a waltz to a foxtrot. I am no longer certain if I am the one leading—I think I like it,” he drawls, halfway through a fine vintage plucked from Bedelia’s cellar.

He waits and can almost hear her response whispered breathlessly on the air. Something about partnership and trust and the masochism of the tango.

He leans back idly in the fullness of a masculine sprawl, so different from his usual effete posture. “I’ve unbuttoned my person suit in front of him. What do you think of that?”

Silence and the moonlight glistening through pale delicate curtains is his only answer.

He pours himself more wine, rudely letting a single blood-red drop splash on her pristine white carpet. “It made me feel…happy. As I have not been in years. Afraid, too,” he says, responding to her imagined question.

His words echo throughout the cavernous walls of her empty home. He swears he can feel the beams and the stucco and the glass press down on him like a cage, Bedelia’s skeleton, Bedelia’s ghost all around him telling him one word: _Stop_.

He stands, wine sloshing in his glass. “Who are you to tell me to stop, Bedelia? You’re not here. I helped you once but now you’re not here to help me, not when I need you the most.” His heart rages, hungry in his breast, ravenous for her in more ways than one. He picks up the bottle of wine and marches into her bedroom.

He will have her, one way or another.

Unceremoniously he sets his wine on her nightstand and flops on her bed, kicking off his loafers. The left side of the bed is firm, the right side made softer and less springy, worn away from years of a woman sleeping alone. He curls to his side, inhaling; a hint of jasmine still lingers amid the stale smell of dust. His hand ghosts over the space where Bedelia’s body would be. He imagines her pliant and eager and yielding, breasts arching up to fill the empty palm of his hand. It occurs to him that he can do more than simply imagine.

He fetches that long-neglected silk nightgown from the drawer and, having pulled back the covers, arranges it artfully on the bed. He undresses without ceremony: shirt, tie, trousers and underwear join his shoes in a pile on the floor. Naked, he slips beneath the stiff brocade coverlet of Bedelia’s bed and sidles up alongside the empty negligee, almost spooning it. He strokes the pillow where he imagines the golden halo of her hair, lets his hand roam freely along the silky curves of the nightdress.

He could be home right now beside a real woman, Alana or any dozens of others, but no. It’s Bedelia that he wants tonight and Bedelia he shall have, in a way the real flesh and blood woman would likely never allow him.

The cool sheets slide over his naked skin, smoothly arousing. His cock is already half hard, but he doesn’t touch himself yet—he would not if Bedelia was truly beside him. Fingertips slide beneath the thin straps of her nightgown, tugging them off pale phantom shoulders. The empty air hums charged beneath his fingers, not unlike the sensation of playing the theremin—he is well-versed at drawing beauty out of thin air. His lips brush the space above her pillow, working his way down to the valley where her breasts would be. He kisses the top of her lace cups, reaches his tongue out to tease and suckle imagined hardened nubs. He sucks hard, no doubt if she were here she would arch off the bed, screaming for him. Having had his fill, he lifts himself up, enjoying the sight of two dark circles wet with his saliva spreading over the gown.

In his mind’s eye, he sees Bedelia prone beneath him, blue eyes turned dusky with want, lips bruised from kissing, her need of him as transparent as the pages of a child’s picture book. He grasps the nightgown in his fist, dragging it teasingly over his now erect phallus, feeling Bedelia’s sweet lips planting butterfly kisses there instead of empty fabric. He wraps the silk tighter around the head of his cock, and it is her hot mouth drinking him in, swallowing him whole. Would Bedelia consent to perform this particular sex act on him? He thinks not, but it doesn’t matter, as he strokes the gown up and down, thrusting up into his own silk covered fist.

He lets his grip slacken with a groan, once again spreading out the gown beside him. He lifts up the hem, imagines himself glimpsing wet silky curls, thighs spreading eagerly for him. He closes his eyes and begins to thrust against the mattress, grinding hard against the layers of silk. He’s close now and he will have his pleasure, he thinks, as he sets an inhuman pace, fucking the mattress relentlessly, over and over. In his fantasy, Bedelia shatters like crystal beneath him, wrapping both legs around his waist, urging him deeper and deeper until he is buried in her up to the hilt. With a gasp and a long, baritone moan he finishes, spilling his hot seed all over the cool silk, delighting in the stain.

*

“I am going away. Not alone,” he tells Bedelia’s empty bedroom some days later. He replaces the silk nightgown, freshly laundered, back in its drawer. He had thought of leaving it there marked with the evidence of his lust, but it seemed too vulgar. It is not how he wants Bedelia to remember him. “I am taking Will and Abigail with me. We will make a new life together, in Paris perhaps or Florence. I would like to show them Florence.”

Bedelia’s bedroom is peaceful in the sun-dappled afternoon. A cardinal chirps out in the garden. He will take that as her quiet assent.

He turns to making her bed, cleaning up the mess he made the last time he was here. By daylight his prior actions seem quite childish and he finds himself very nearly embarrassed. He smoothes the sheets and coverlet, the corners as neat as any chambermaid’s.

“I’ve always admired your prudence, Bedelia. I hope, for your sake, you’ll give me no reason to call on you,” he says, taking one last glance at her house before leaving. He wonders how she would advise him now. He wonders if he would listen.

He lets her home settle back into its enchanted slumber. It occurs to him now that he’s been keeping it for her, expecting her to return, but she hasn’t. “Au revoir,” he says fondly, the words more prescient than he realizes.


End file.
